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SPEECH OF MR. GRATTAN,

ON

THE RIOT ACT;

OR, BILL TO PREVENT TUMULTUOUS RISINGS AND ASSEMBLIES.

PREFATORY OBSERVATIONS.

THE debate which took place in the Irish House of Commons upon this Bill, is so particularly calculated to demonstrate the wisdom of those measures, which were recommended by Mr. Grattan, when giving his opinion of the operation of tithes on the industry and feelings of Ireland: the compilers of this volume conceived that they would commit no very serious chronological error, by giving the following speech, immediately after those, which though in point of time it preceded, are best illustrated by a practical comment on the violence and pride displayed in the Irish riot act, for the prevention of tumultuous risings and assemblies. In this bill, brought in and recommended by the late Lord Clare (who was then Attorney-general) will be found that species of remedy, which skims the surface of public injury, while it leaves the thorn which festered and tortured the patient, still rankling in the wound, and eating into its miserable victim.

On the 31st January, 1787, when the house was in committee, upon that part of the address to the lieutenant, which related to the disgraceful commotions then raging in the west of Ireland, the Attorney-general submitted to the house the following narrative of facts, on which he intended to found his bill, for the prevention of tumultuous risings and assemblies. He stated the rise and progress of the disturbance; "the commencement," said he, 'was in one or two parishes in the county of Kerry, and they proceed thus:-The people assembled in a catholic chapel, and there took an oath to obey the laws of Captain Right, and to starve the clergy; they then proceeded to the next parishes, on

the following Sunday, and there swore the people in the same manner, with this addition, that they (the people last sworn) should on the ensuing Sunday, proceed to the chapels of their next neighbouring parishes, and swear the inhabitants of those parishes in like manner;-proceeding in this manner, they very soon went through the province of Munster; the first object was the reformation of tithes; they swore not to give more than a certain price per acre; not to assist, or to allow them to be assisted in drawing the tithe, and to permit no proctor; they next took upon them to prevent the collection of parish cesses; next to nominate parish clerks, and, in some cases, curates; to say what church should or should not be repaired, and in one case to threaten that they would burn a new church, if the old one were not given for a mass-house; at last they proceeded to regulate the price of lands; to raise the price of labour, and to oppose the collection of the hearth-money and other taxes. Bodies of 5000 of them have been seen to march through the country unarmed; and if met by any magistrate, they never offered the smallest rudeness or offence; on the contrary, they had allowed persons charged with crimes, to be taken from amongst them by the magistrate alone, unaided by any force."

The Attorney-general said, it would require the utmost ability of parliament to come to the root of those evils; he did not believe that there was the least ground to accuse the clergy of extortion; far from receiving the tenth, he knew of no instance where they received the twentieth part; he was well acquainted with the province of Munster, and that it was impossible for human wretchedness to exceed that of the peasantry of that province; the unhappy tenantry were ground to powder by relentless landlords; that far from being able to give the clergy their just dues, they had not food or raiment for themselves; the landlord grasped the whole and sorry was he to add, that not satisfied with the present extortion, some landlords had been so base as to instigate the insurgents to rob the clergy of their tithes-not in order to alleviate the distresses of the tenantry, but that they might add the clergy's share to the cruel rack-rents already paid; the poor people of Munster lived in a more abject state of poetry thun human nature could be supposed equal to bear; their miseries, it is true, were intolerable, but they did not originate with the clergy, nor could the clergy stand by and see them take the re

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dress into their own hands;-upon the best consideration which he had been able to give the subject, two circumstances, which had contributed to spread the commotions, required to be immediately corrected.

The first was, that under the existing law, the kind of combination which pervaded the province of Munster, was deemed but a misdemeanour-a bailable offence; and no magistrate could refuse to take bail for it.

The second was, the criminal neglect and insufficiency of magistrates throughout the disturbed part of the country. To check those alarming acts, he would bring in a bill, which contained such provisions as were calculated to inflict adequate and effectual punishment, on persons guilty of outrage, riot, and illegal combination; and of administering and taking unlawful oaths.

After this candid admission, by the attorney general, of the extreme wretchedness and misery of the peasantry of the west of Ireland; and after the confession, that the application of an adequate and sufficient remedy to heal the public wounds, would require all the talents and understanding of parliament, it will not be forgotten, that the same law officer opposed every effort made by Mr. Grattan to institute an inquiry into the real cause of the public grievances; and that the Irish government of 1788 closed their cars against the suggestions of those mild remedies which would have restored peace and comfort to the poor of Ireland!

The bill now brought in, by the attorney general, for preventing tumultuous risings and assemblies, was opposed in every stage by the patriots of the day; as containing clauses unnecessary and unconstitutional. They objected, that the deviations from the English riot act were all founded in the greatest severity, with the additional consideration, that the Irish act was to be perpetual.

The attorney general supported the deviations from the English riot act; but gave up the most odious and objectionable clause-directing the magistrates to demolish the Roman catholic chapels, in which any combinations had been formed, or an unlawful oath administered.

The secretary, Mr. Orde, lamented that any thing should have appeared in print, purporting that those insurrections had arisen from a popish conspiracy!-He declared, he not only did not be

lieve it, but he could say, he knew it not to be true; and asserted, that in some places the insurgents had deprived the Roman catholic clergy of one half of their income.

Upon this occasion, Mr. Curran came forward, with his accustomed boldness, to arraign the wisdom, the expediency, and the humanity of the bill, proposed by the attorney-general, for the suppression of disturbances, "What," said Mr. Curran, "has been the effect of your sanguinary code against Ireland? The overstrained security of your law, amounts universally to the impunity of the offender; for every good and social principle in the heart of man, is an obstruction to its execution.-The witness, the judge, and the jury, concur, by every practical artifice, to save the wretch from a punishment inadequate to the crime. I will ever oppose the principle of a bill, that is written in blood. The general principle receives double strength, from the double circumstance of the times.

"The disturbances of the south were not only exaggerated beyond the truth, by every misrepresentation of artful malignity, but were held up to the public mind in so silly, or so wicked a point of view, as to make it impossible for parliament to proceed, without the most imminent danger of sacrificing every advantage we have acquired. What has been the state of your ecclesiasti cal polity for centuries? The church of Ireland has been in the hands of strangers, advanced to the mitre, not for their virtues or their knowledge, but quartered on the country through their own servility, or the caprice of their benefactors; inclined naturally to oppress us, to hate us, and to defame us; while the real duties of our religion have been performed by our own native clergy; who, with all the finer feelings of gentlemen and scholars, have been obliged to do the drudgery of their profession, for forty, or at most for fifty pounds a year; without the means of being liberal, from their poverty; and without the hope of advancing themselves by their learning or their virtues-in a country where preferment was notoriously not to be attained by either.

"On this ground, I would vindicate the great body of the native acting clergy of Ireland from any imputation, because of the small progress which protestantism had made among us; the pride of episcopacy, and the low state to which our ministers of the gospel were reduced, abundantly accounted for it; their dis

tresses and oppression were the real objects of parliamentary consideration; and not the discovery of new modes of torture, or the enactment of new statutes of blood."

No man is to be found, in the history of the Irish parliament, more distinguished for his sensibility to the distresses and sufferings of his countrymen, of every religious persuasion-his fearless and manly assertion of their claims to the attention, the protection, and the justice of the legislature, than Mr. Curran, (now master of the rolls.)

It is impossible to read over the parliamentary history of Ireland, for the last thirty years, without making frequent pauses, to admire the steady political virtue, the enlightened, liberal, and comprehensive views, the unrivalled efforts of genius and of wit, of our greatly gifted countryman.

Few Irishmen ever attained so proud and so exalted a situation, as that which Mr. Curran now fills, with such inflexible independence of principle, or of demeanour, or so little humility to men in power and authority. He has risen, by the splendor of his talents, and the integrity of his views, to an almost unexampled degree of public confidence. He is one of the very few, whose constancy to his country has been rewarded by the possession of honours, and emoluments; and was it not for that happy interval, when the great and benevolent mind of Charles Fox commanded an ascendency in the councils of his Majesty, we should not now perhaps be able to congratulate our countrymen, on the justice which has been done to the transcendant merits of their first advocate, and perhaps the first advocate in the British empire.

When the politicians of the day, who, (with some exception) have risen in this country, as they gave up its liberty and its honour, shall be mingled in the dust, with the hundreds whose example they have imitated; when no record will be found of their memory, nor no recollection of their names, our illustrious Curran will be the theme of every Irish seminary, the bright and glowing example of political virtue, in an age of universal sycophancy, and national degradation.

The efforts of Mr. Curran, as well as the great and splendid struggles of Mr. Grattan, were in vain; laws of severity were preferred to measures of redress and conciliation. The pride of the legislature would not be seen to capitulate to a barbarous

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